Irish Voters Reject Broader Ban on Abortions

By BRIAN LAVERY

Published: March 8, 2002

DUBLIN, March 7—
Irish voters narrowly rejected a proposal on Wednesday that would have tightened what is already a near total ban on abortions here by preventing pregnant mothers who are suicidal from terminating their pregnancies.

The result, with 50.42 percent opposing and 49.58 percent in favor, hinged on just 10,556 votes of 1.2 million cast and showed sharp geographic divisions in this deeply Roman Catholic country, where urban residents are generally younger and more liberal.

In a news conference after most votes were counted, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern conceded defeat, saying that the result would not influence his own views against abortion. But the failure of the referendum was a significant embarrassment to the prime minister, who faces a general election in May.

On taking office in 1997, Mr. Ahern had promised several independent politicians that he would hold a new referendum on abortion in exchange for their support in Parliament. After a long process of public consultation, his party, Fianna Fail, eventually produced a complicated legal proposal that it hoped would satisfy Ireland's vocal anti-abortion lobby.

Low voter turnout, at 42 percent, was attributed to bad weather, general confusion and apathy on the part of citizens who felt that they had already decided the issue, in national referendums on abortion in 1983 and again in 1992.

On the streets of Dublin today, people seemed more concerned about shopping than about a final decision in a debate that had in any case convulsed the country for the last few weeks.

''The questions that were asked were not really about abortion,'' said Jacqueline McKay, 59, who voted against the proposal. ''To me, it was a Mickey Mouse referendum.''

She said that she opposed the criminal section of the proposal, which would have set 12-year prison terms for anyone who performed or facilitated an illegal abortion in Ireland, including women who performed an abortion on themselves.

In the Irish Constitution, a pregnant woman and her unborn child are both guaranteed an equal right to life. Doctors are allowed to perform abortions only if the mother would otherwise die; the procedure is forbidden even in cases of rape or incest. If the proposal had passed on Wednesday, it would have rejected the threat of suicide as a legitimate danger to the mother's life.

Anti-abortion groups wanted to remove the possibility that the threat of suicide could allow a woman to obtain an abortion in Ireland -- a principle established in a 1992 Supreme Court case -- because they see it as a potential loophole in the law. A referendum, they felt, would strengthen the legal ban by codifying it in the Constitution.

But the measure, as framed, found extreme anti-abortion activists campaigning alongside pro-choice groups to defeat the proposal because both objected to its definition of when life begins.

In order to preserve the legality of the morning-after pill, it defined the beginning of life as when a fertilized egg is implanted in the womb, not at conception. But confusion surrounded that issue as well, since the government's Referendum Commission and the Association of Catholic Bishops said that the morning-after pill's legal status would remain ambiguous even if the proposal passed.

In practice, the amendment would have made little difference to Irish women seeking abortions. Until last year, the Irish Medical Council's ethical guidelines prevented Irish doctors from performing abortions, even under the restrictive circumstances when they are legally allowed to do so.

Some 7,000 Irish women go to England for abortions each year, terminating 10 percent of Irish pregnancies, according to a study by Trinity College Dublin. Only recently have the 100,000 Irish women who have experienced that journey begun to be heard as a voice in Irish society, by telling their stories on talk radio and in newspaper interviews.

In February, Deirdre de Barra, a pregnant mother from Dublin, prompted women to speak out about their own experiences after she wrote an letter to The Irish Times, telling how her unborn child would die shortly after birth due to a chromosomal abnormality, and how she dealt with being unable to have an abortion here.